Guilty Pleasures
by JadeEye
Summary: Naruto has some suspicions and the guys *try* to help out.


A/N: Please take note that this story revolves around the **Naruto/Sakura** pairing. If you don't like them together, just don't read it. Please don't flame. Honest criticism, however, of the writing style or characterization is welcomed.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

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Naruto suspected that she had a guilty pleasure long before he found proof of it.

The first few times that he came home early to find her sprawled under the covers on her stomach, kicking her legs back and forth like a schoolgirl, and she yelled at him to knock before he came in, idiot, and aimed a chakra-charged pillow at him when he suggested that maybe she shouldn't be a shinobi if she hadn't heard him squelching upstairs in his soaked sandals, he assumed that it was simply her way of venting her Inner Sakura after a particularly long day at the hospital.

But sometimes he would call her name several times to help her with something – like a few days ago, for instance, when he was precariously balanced on a ladder with a clean air filter in one hand and a dirty one in the other – and she wouldn't hear his increasingly more panicked hollers until it was too late. He had toppled off the ladder with a crash that even Sasuke in his wooden bucket would have been able to hear. _Then_ she had appeared, pulse beating fast and loud enough for him to hear and face flushed as bright a pink as her hair.

"Sounds suspicious," said Shikamaru when Naruto mentioned this – nonchalantly, of course, not as though it was something he was actually worried about. Or needed advice about. "Probably best to steer clear of it. If Ino's scary when she gets pissed at me for being nosy, I can only imagine what Sakura would be like. Che."

Then he rubbed his ear as though the mere thought made his eardrums hurt.

Gaara blinked and said nothing, which meant that he saw nothing wrong with Sakura's behavior and did not see why Naruto was concerned by this when he should be signing the trade agreement so that they could both get out of these cumbersome Kage robes.

Neji said that Sakura had probably found another man to take care of her needs and that Naruto would have been expecting it, since being married to him was probably more like being a mother than a wife.

Lee quickly and vehemently disputed Neji's words, proclaiming loudly that Naruto was probably the best husband in the world; after all, Tenten had said exactly that the other day, and Tenten was a wonderful judge of men, for she had, after all, won the burning heart of his most distinguished and worthy rival, Neji-san –

Neji's Gentle Fist cut off Lee's proclamation.

Gut-wrenching as Neji's suggestion was to Naruto, Kiba's theory was the most disturbing theory of them all. It sent Naruto hurrying home at a lightning-fast clip across the rooftops, his Hokage hat soaring off his head and landing on top of someone's bowl of ramen in the street below.

He landed on the balcony outside their bedroom and pounded on the door. "Sakura! Sakura, open up!"

After another moment of pounding, the doors flew open.

Sakura glared at him, resplendent in her Jounin vest with flour smudged on her hitai-ate where it hung loosely around her neck.

"Did you make Gaara mad again?" she demanded. "I'm not helping you escape this time, Naruto, you deserve it – "

"No, that's not it!" Naruto scrambled off the railing, grabbing her by the shoulders and steering her backward into the room until the back of her knees hit the bed.

She gave him a weirded-out look.

Naruto swallowed. "Sakura." He stared into her green eyes hard. "I want to – I want to – l

He chickened out. Kiba's explanation was just too lewd to voice.

Instead, he heard himself say, "Am I not good enough? Because I can do better, I swear! Kiba told me some stuff, and Lee said Gai-sensei has some exercises, and I bet Kakashi-sensei could give me a few ideas, and we can do it any time you want, and I won't stay late at the office anymore – you don't have to take care of it yourself!"

Sakura's expression had begun rather petulant, her brows knit together beneath her pink bangs. Then it had melted into vague confusion as she listened to him ramble.

Now, it was open-mouthed, wide-eyed, pink-cheeked, and throbbing-veined.

"Are you talking about what I think you're talking about?" Her voice was high with disbelief.

Naruto wasn't sure if her shock was a good sign or a bad one. He really wasn't that good at strategy, either, not when it came to Sakura.

But in any situation, no matter how far under she had snowed him, he had one ultimate jutsu.

He used it now.

A sound escaped her as his lips closed over hers. Her hand slid into his hair as his tongue slid into her mouth. As her other hand slid beneath the vest he wore under his jacket, he forgot that the kiss had any purpose other than the sheer pleasure of kissing her, and the position in which he'd placed them, her sandwiched between him and the bed, seemed more ingenious than any tactic Shikamaru had ever devised.

But only a few seconds after they were horizontal, she trapped his hips between her knees and flipped them over. A growl gathered in Naruto's throat as she rocked back on her heels above him and pinned his wrists to the bedspread with her hands.

"This?" Her voice was throaty. "Did you mean _this_?"

"Yeah," he breathed back. He snatched his wrists from under her hands in a movement so swift that she fell forward, palms sliding across the bedspread and chest across his. It put her neck in perfect reach of his lips.

She gasped and arched. "But – Na – _Naruto_ – wait – "

"I don't want you to have to do it yourself," he murmured against her neck, rolling them over again so that her unbound hair spilled across the comforter. "That's my job," he growled as she gasped and her legs closed around his waist again.

But what he had said made her stop, her legs stiffening. Her hand fisted in the hair at the back of his neck, keeping him from following his lips' path down her neck.

"Of course it is," she said, her voice sharp despite its breathlessness. "Who else's would it be?"

Talk about ruining the mood. Naruto forced himself to unglue his eyes from where they had been and meet hers. "You know…" He cleared his throat.

She gave him a look that said he better go on or she'd rip all that hair on his neck out.

He sighed. "All those times you've acted all weird and locked yourself inside the bedroom. Kiba told me you've probably been…you know…"

For a minute, her face was as blank as an ANBU mask. Then her eyes widened, and she went as red as her hitai-ate band.

"Oh my god," she said. "And you _believed_ him?" Her hand let go of his hair to cover her flushing face. She rolled onto her side, burying her head in the pillow. "Oh my _god_…"

"Well…" He sat back slightly, eyeing her. "Weren't you?"

"NO!" She whirled back onto her back to face him, hair slapping his elbows as she glared up at him. "I mean – I haven't – it's not like _that_! See, this is why I didn't want you to know, I _knew_ all you men were perverts – "

He was beginning to feel extremely reassured. Reassured enough, even, to make a joke. "What do you expect? I had Kakashi, Ebisu, _and_ Jiraiya for teachers."

She punched him in the arm. "Yeah, well, Tsunade was an alcoholic, but you don't see me downing my body weight in sake everyday."

"Yeah, not _anymore_," he muttered. "I'll never forget the day I came into the bar and saw you kissing Tenten."

"See! Pervert!" She punched him again. He was beginning to lose feeling in his arm. "You wanna know what I do? Do you?"

She shoved him off of her and scooted to the other side of the bed, reaching into the drawer of her nightstand. She pulled something out and tossed it to him. "Here."

He caught it with reflexive ease and glanced down at it. It was a book, a thick paperback like Icha Icha Paradise, but its cover had a drawing of a guy in a ninja uniform with his mask pulled away from his face so he could kiss the Tsunade-sized woman locked in his arms.

Naruto gaped at it, mouth opening and closing. After a minute of this, Sakura leaned forward and snatched the book out of his lap. She stuffed it back into her nightstand.

"I've been reading _those_, okay," she said. "Hinata lent me the first one and got me hooked on the series. "I didn't want you to find out because it's _embarrassing_." She turned her head to the side, chin jutting out in a profile of stubborn, wounded, adorable dignity.

Naruto leaned forward and planted a kiss on her chin, dragging the pad of his thumb down her jaw.

Which snapped shut as her head spun to look at him, green eyes wide and suspicious. "You're not going to make fun of me?"

"Oh, I will." He grinned against her lips. "But for now I was thinking we could re-enact some of the best scenes from the book?"

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